In case T-691/14, the General Court of the European Union (the “GC”) has reduced Servier’s fine for abuse of dominance position through a pay-for-delay practice by €102.67 million. According to the GC, the European Commission (the “Commission”) incorrectly defined the relevant market and it erroneously limited the market to perindopril, while it should have included…
In case Apple Sales International et al. v. MJA (acting as liquidator of eBizcuss.com) (C-595/17), the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) has recently affirmed that a jurisdiction clause is applicable to an action for damages brought by a distributor against its supplier for antitrust damages, despite it does not expressly refer to disputes…
On February 29, the General Court issued six judgments ruling on the cartel fines imposed by the Commission on several companies in the sector of international air freight forwarding services. In 2012, the Commission imposed fines amounting to a total of € 169 million on 14 international groups of companies active in the sector of…
On 25 November 2015, the Court of Appeal of Paris allowed the appeal of Google against a first instance decision granting damages to Evermaps for abuse of dominant position of Google. The two companies are direct competitors in the online map sector, as both companies offer a mapping service that allows users to embed a…
Comment by Marco Lo Bue (Italian Competition Authority) On 16 July 2015, the European Court of Justice addressed the request for a preliminary ruling submitted by the District Court of Dűsseldorf with regard to the Huawei v ZTE case . The referring Court had raised the question whether an action for infringement brought by a FRAND-encumbered…
The European Court of Justice delivered, on 16 July, its judgment on the preliminary ruling regarding the Huawei case, stating that an action brought by an undertaking in dominant position, seeking injunction and compensation against an alleged infringer of a SEP, not necessarily infringes Article 102 TFEU. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd (‘Huawei’) owns – inter…
The burden of proof falling on the claimant in competition damages actions, especially if stand-alone type, is notoriously fraught with difficulty. As a consequence, if the national judge interprets the domestic procedural laws in a strict and formalistic manner, this may render the burden not just difficult but nearly close to impossible. The Italian Court…
With a recent judgment in the case T-623/13, the General Court ratified the presumption used by the European Commission for which documents exchanged between the Commission and a national competition authority in proceedings concerning an infringement of the competition rules may harm the commercial interest of the undertakings involved and therefore are not, in principle,…
Vivil, a German producer of cough drops and vitamin sweets, sued Südzucker, Europe’s largest sugar refiner, for compensation of damages caused by the German ‘sugar cartel’. The defendant participated, together with Nordzucker and Pfeifer, to anticompetitive agreements on sales areas, quotas and prices. The infringements involved the sale of sugar for the processing industry (so-called industrial…
The Summer School is organised by the Osservatorio Permanente sull’Applicazione delle Regole di Concorrenza based at Faculty of Law of Trento University. The Summer School is co-directed by Gian Antonio Benacchio and Michele Carpagnano. The Summer School offers a unique opportunity to analyse and study EU Competition Law and Economics at an advanced level. This advanced course combines academia with a pragmatic…